Customer Reviews

Starfist: Kingdom's Fury

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

It's the 25th Century, Humanity has settled dozens of worlds. The most dangerous species in explored space is other humans. The Confederation Marines are the descendents of the US and Royal Marines of our time. They keep order among the worlds humans have colonized. Life is good. The Religious Wars of the 21st Century resulted in Kingdom. Essentially, it is a reservation, where all the Religious Fundamentalists of all Religions have been "persuaded" to move.
It's a pesthole of constant religious war, but at least all the nutcases are in one asylum. The Confederation watches to make sure they can't escape from the planet.
And then come the Skinks - a bunch of xenocidal humaniform lizards who think that killing humans is great fun - and the survivors make good slaves.
The Marines show up, and the Skink Commander decides that he not only wants to defeat the Marines, he wants to humiliate and intimidate them. Trouble is, somebody forgot to tell him something - you can defeat Marines. It's difficult, but possible.
You can humiliate Marines. Difficult but possible.
But INTIMIDATE them? - that is a leetle bit closer to impossible...
This is a book of sweeping realistic vistas, from the Infantry "Line Animal" Grunt slogging in the mud, to Space Battle between 10 KM Starcruisers, to the internecine political wrangling on Capitol Hill.
The characters are three dimensional and highly believable.
Enjoy...and go back and get the rest of the series. It's worth it.

KINGDOM'S FURY(2002) is the eighth book from the STARFIST series of 25th Century Military SciFi stories, about a company of Space Marines, who are sent to various planets to quell uprisings, or battle aliens.

This book, is basically a continuation of Book 7, in which the Marines of the 34th FIST have been sent to a backwater world dominated by religious sects, to repulse and invasion by the merciless aliens known as the "Skinks". The Skink technology is roughly equivalent to Human 25th Century tech, although some of it is way ahead, and some of it is behind.

Amazingly, this book is a standout in the series... there is interesting dialog or action on every page, and the subplots are quite detailed and interesting. The first few books in the series were quite good, but suffered from some obvious and serious (yet easily correctable) faults. Indeed, it was somewhat frustrating reading the first STARFIST books, because I knew they could have been much better... and some of the middle books from the series were actually below par - books 3 and 6 especially so. However - KINGDOM'S FURY avoids all the faults and stupid mistakes, and "knocks it out of the park". I'm happy to give this book a rare 5 star rating. BRAVO.

This entire series is fun to read. The character developement and plot twists are fascinating in the extreme. Just when you think it can't get better it does! The entire Starfist series is a 'have to' read.

Great book part of a great series. I've read them all and loved them.

The 34th is still embroiled in its battle against the invading aliens on the planet of Kingdom and like most militaries, it has as much trouble with the politicians as it does with the enemies. They are also still doing so with élan, spirit de corps and good old fashioned jarhead toughness.

The aliens are quite different than your normal science fiction fare. They are amphibians and instead of using fancy ray guns, they use acid. They are tough and utterly alien but they are also up against the finest military tradition on earth.

The book feels the loss of Gunnery Sgt. Bass, apparently killed in the last volume, but there is reason for hope. A character who is probably him turns up for a few pages at the very end. Now I just have to wait for the next book to come in.

It's a good story.

Wow! I've read all the books so far in this series, and this one is the best one yet. I can't wait for the next books. That was a wonderful twist at the end (which I'm not going to say anything more about or it will be ruined)! Totally unexpected. The whole book was well written and the different parts were very well integrated.

This is another masterpiece from David Sherman and Dan Cragg.
I woln't give anything away but the day it came I read the whole thing. If youv'e read the others you know you have to buy this one.